IENE Participated in BPIE’s 2nd Bucharest Roundtable on the Financing of Energy Efficiency in Building

On March 16th the Brussels based Building Performance Institute of Europe (BPIE) organized a roundtable meeting in the Romanian capital on the "Financing Energy Efficiency in Romanian buildings by using EU Structural Funds”. BPIE had invited IENE to participate in this unique and highly topical seminar by presenting Greece’s experience with EU backed energy efficiency programmes.

This event aimed in actively contributing to the elaboration of financing schemes based on the access to EU Structural Funds for the thermal rehabilitation of Romanian buildings. The objective of this roundtable, the second one to be organized over the last 12 months, was to share EU best practices as well as to support the national efforts for the implementation of EU energy efficiency policies in Romania. The roundtable brought together high level decision makers from the government, industry, financial institutions, consumer organizations and academia, in an effort to stimulate the debate on buildings energy efficiency topics but also to identify the main action points for Romania.

Welcome remarks to the event were contributed by Mr. Serban Danciu, BPIE, Task Force Manager in Romania while an introduction to BPIE and the roundtable meeting was made by Mr. Oliver Rapf, BPIE’s, Executive Director who was also the event’s moderator. An overview of "EU funding sources for large scale building renovation” was made by Mr. Tudor Constantinescu, Principal Advisor and Acting Director of DG Energy while the Secretary of State at the Ministry of Regional Development and Tourism, Mr. Evgen Curteanu talked on "Current Strategies for the refurbishment of the Romanian building stock”. Following that a lively discussion took place on the Romanian experience in leveraging the EU and international financing opportunities. How can such opportunities be adjusted and concretely up- scaled in Romania’s national background was the focus of the discussion which involved some of Romania’s key energy efficiency and energy policy players.

The Lithuanian experience in using EU Structural Funds for increasing the energy performance of buildings, was presented by Ms. Simona Irzikeviciute, Head of Project Management Division at the Housing Urban Development Agency of Lithuania. IENE’s contribution which focused on Greece’s experience in using EU Structural Funds for increasing the energy performance of buildings was presented by Mr. Costis Stambolis IENE’s Executive Director. The full power point presentation can be seen here.